SWNA Update

We're up to 100* members! Our goal for the end of the year is 200 members, if you have any friends, partners, or neighbors that haven't signed up yet, please give them a little nudge to sign up if you think they'd be interested in receiving the newsletter and attending events. http://join.somawestneighbors.org

We'll have a station this Thursday on Folsom/Hallam for Soma Nights. Feel free to stop by!

Some things that you can do that would be very helpful to us and hopefully not require too much of your time:

• Feedback - If you have anything you'd like to see or if there are things that you think the association could do better, please let us know. We'd like to expand the FAQ on the website, so any questions that you think we could answer there would be great.
• Join the Slack - if you haven't joined the Slack yet (members only), we're working on getting more adoption. If you're not a Slack person, that's ok too. If you have something else in mind for group chat or collaboration, let us know. We're still figuring out our communication strategy.

If you're interested in volunteering some of your time to the association, there are few initiatives that we can use help with (for any of these feel free to reach out to info@somawestneighbors.org):

• Building Ambassadors - this would involve being a person in your building to recruit other people to the association. This could be as simple as posting a flyer to your community bulletin board or communication tool (Slack, WhatsApp, etc)
• Event Planning - Our event goal this year is to have a larger event, 50+ people, every other month. If you have ideas or experience with putting together events, we'd love your help. Our next planned event is a block party in June, but we still need to finalize a location. Ideas welcome! We're thinking about Sumner as a potential location.
• Writers for Website - We want to create content that highlights the things that we love about the neighborhood. This could be a listicle about your favorite coffee spots, favorite restaurants, bestof in the neighborhood, best places to take your dogs, etc. We don't want to limit content to just the fluffy things either. If you're interested in writing about the history of the neighborhood, maybe a service guide for unhoused peoples, public works projects like the Folsom/Howard streetscape, this would be a good way to work on your writing skills!
• Social Media Content - If you enjoy posting to social media, we need more people to manage our @somawestneighbors Instagram account. We're using something called Buffer for content management, but truthfully not using it very well. Social is our main way of raising awareness of our group, so any Instagram aficionados would be welcome!
• Committees - We have the following committees available to join:
  • Business Relations
  • Community/Events/Membership
  • Communications/Branding
  • Government Relations
  • Finance

Some small informal events that I'd like to try to organize, if you're interested in any of these let me know:

• monthly informal coffee meetups
• potluck dinners/lunches
• more informal social get togethers

A few things to be on the lookout for in the coming months:

• September 2025 - first year update meeting
• January 2026 - annual member meeting

Have a great week and Memorial Day Weekend!